What's the minimum word count for an SEO-performing blog?
It can feel like you get into the weeds and completely stuck when it comes to some of the details of blogging!
‘How long should my blog post be?’ is a common conundrum that small business owners face when it comes to generating content for their website blog. My rule of thumb is ‘it’s not what you’ve got, but what you do with it’, as there’s actually no rulebook when it comes to word counts for blogs.
Given that blog length or word counts create such a lot of confusion and ambiguity what we want to do in this article is give you some helpful pointers on word counts or length for effective blogs. Note, its not fixed, so there’s plenty of flexibility and not necessarily a ‘wrong’ answer.
Here are the most common queries when it comes to blog post word length and we’ve tied it into SEO performance on Google, as that’s the ultimate goal here. With blog content and posts on your website, we want to answer key questions people ask in search queries to drive traffic to our websites. If you’ve got a good design, layout and structure, this will in turn lead to enquiries.
In this article:
What’s the ideal blog post length for SEO on Google?
Do longer blog posts rank better on Google?
Is there a minimum word count for blog posts to rank on Google?
Does Google penalise blog posts for being too long?
How does word count impact engagement metrics (bounce rate, time on page)?
Should I aim for a specific word count for niche topics?
Does updating old blog posts with additional word count improve ranking?
Wildings is a website designer for small businesses. Our studio is based in Torquay, Devon, and we provide blogging workshops for creative, hospitality & lifestyle businesses across the UK (like garden designers, interior designers, architects, floral designers and more!). In this series, we’re looking at how to improve your blogging and content marketing to attract potential clients and boost your SEO presence in organic Google results. Explore the series on blogging 101 →
1. What’s the ideal blog post length for SEO on Google?
According to research, the ‘sweet spot’ for word count in a blog post in order to rank higher in Google search results is between 1,000 and 2,500 words.
This is what’s known as ‘long form’ content, so a blog of a length that allows the reader to go into depth on the topic and really grapple with the ins and outs of the subject without needing to look elsewhere.
The reason blogs with a longer word count perform better is because they allow key words and phrases to be mentioned more; readers typically spend longer reading them which search engines like to see; and they give you more opportunities to include relevant links to other page.
However, longer is not necessarily better.
Not every visitor to your website will want to spend many minutes reading a blog; sometimes people want quick answers, so pass over blogs with long word counts for alternative blogs that are succinct and deliver value in a quick, upfront way.
You need to understand your audience and sector and match the length or word count of your blog to match.
Read more: How Long Should a Blog Post Be? A Data-Driven Guide from Semrush
2. Do longer blog posts rank better on Google?
Research shows that most of the top results on Google or search engines are blog posts with a word count of between 2,000 and 2,500.
As you may have noticed, that figure differs from the one at the start, but the point is that once you reach the 1,000 word count threshold for a blog post, you’re into long form content. This gives you the ability to generate more value through the post, hence why they rank better.
The big caveat is that you can’t waffle on in the blog post or use ChatGPT to generate bland drivel.
The content in your blog needs to be valuable, relevant and specific so that a clickthrough from a search result is well rewarded.
So, in terms of whether there's a direct correlation between word count and search rankings, yes, there is as a general rule: longer blog posts can provide more depth and value, it’s important that the content is high-quality and relevant, not just long for the sake of it.
A bit of personal advice: I would always opt for a short blog post if the alternative is getting so stressed out at the thought of writing a long blog post that you end up never doing it.
It’s much better to generate blog post content that you then go back and improve. It’s impossible to improve and work on content that doesn’t exist!
Read more: Character Count 101: Ideal Length for Blog Posts from HubSpot
3. Is there a minimum word count for blog posts to rank on Google?
There is no minimum word count for blog posts to rank on Google. Sometimes blog posts with a short word count come top - these can be short posts with fewer than 500 words.
Note that no where in Google’s help material does it say that your website visibility is determined by word count or blog length.
However, it’s important to understand why this is, as it relates to what we understand about blogs above with a long word count.
The reason why certain blog posts with a short word count can perform well for SEO is because they deal with a topic no one else is talking about - perhaps a niche subject or question.
This is why it’s so important to answer the questions your ideal clients are asking on your website blog - so that you give your website the best chance of appearing in a search result.
However, in saturated markets, if there are legions of websites all tackling the same question, it’s going to be much harder to compete, as you need to do more to stand out and unpack a topic in a helpful or relevant way.
Overall, the general advice is that short word count blog content can rank, but only if it effectively answers a user's question; in that respect longer word count blog posts often have the advantage of depth and engagement.
Read more: What’s The Ideal Blog Post Length For SEO? from SearchEngineJournal
4. Does Google penalise blog posts for being too long?
On the other hand, you might be concerned if your blog post’s word count is too long - does Google penalise overly-long blog posts or do readers lose interest?
This is a good question, as we’ve become sensitive to the limits of content generation through social media marketing. Social media algorithms can be notoriously fickle when it comes to the minutiae of posts.
However, when it comes to ultra-long blogs posts, there’s no direct penalty for length or word count.
As we’ve discussed so far, the most important factor by far when it comes to SEO-performing website or blog content is quality.
If your ultra-long blog post is packed full of helpful insights, good advice and relevant information, it’s going to do well in search result positions.
There’s no guarantee it will always do well, as search results are competitive and you need to update website content regularly.
Again, if it’s bland, ai-generated rubbish, you won’t be doing yourself any favours - it’s essential to ensure that your post remains engaging and valuable. What Google will penalise your website or blog for is sneaky, underhand SEO tactics (known as ‘black hat’) or duplicate content (more scraping or plagiarising other sites rather than inadvertently covering the same topic more than once).
Read more: Google: Short Articles Won't Penalize Your Site; Think About Users from Search Engine Roundtable
5. How does word count impact engagement metrics (bounce rate, time on page)?
Once you get into blogging more you will come across topics on user engagement such as bounce rate or time on page.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who arrive at your site and then click away without visiting any other pages. The rationale is that if people bounce away from your site immediately, it’s a sign it’s not as relevant to the search result as it could be. (Unless it’s a good page and they don’t need to look elsewhere.)
Time on page is another metric (that you can find in Google Analytics) that tells you how long a visitor spent on a page consuming the content. Again, the thinking here is that the longer a visitor spends on a page, the more likely it is that the page is helpful - otherwise why would they bother hanging around?
That’s a quick overview and there is more nuance to it than we have time to cover here.
The key thing to bear in mind when it comes to blog word count or length is that the longer a blog post the higher your chance of positively impacting your bounce rate or time on page.
Key takeaway: this applies only if the quality, relevance and authority of your content is top notch.
To summarise, longer blog content that is well-structured and engaging can lead to higher time-on-page, but things like poor formatting or irrelevant content might increase bounce rates.
Read more: Engagement rate and bounce rate from Google Analytics Help
6. Should I aim for a specific word count for niche topics?
This is a another good question when it comes to the word count or length of your blog posts.
Thankfully the answer is pretty straightforward: for a more specialised topic, the length of your blog post is not what’s important; it’s whether it’s relevant and helpful.
If your specialised topic or niche subject requires a longer blog in order to do it justice, then that’s what you need to do.
If you need to be succinct, use bullet points or perhaps include a few more visuals, then that’s the approach to take and you can dial back the word count. The thing is to exercise your judgement, plus you can always check Google Search Console afterwards to get some insights on performance.
Again, don’t rest on your laurels: always be checking back to see how historic blogs posts are doing and how you can improve them. If not, over time they will get overtaken. Sometimes this is purely by virtue of being too old. I’ve seen shorter blog posts that are newer rank better than much more in-depth blogs that were published less recently.
Overall, when it comes to writing lengthy posts, shorter, highly-targeted articles can perform well, but you need to do your homework on your competition and understand what your users are looking for in your niche.
Read more: Does word count even matter for SEO anymore? from r/SEO on Reddit
7. Does updating old blog posts with additional word count improve ranking?
Updating old blog posts is one of the most underrated areas of website maintenance and content marketing I know of.
So many times I’ve seen small business owners delete old blog posts rather than use what they’ve got to improve them.
Firstly, when you delete an old blog post, you lose all its ‘Google juice’ (even if a small amount), which is to say Google’s awareness of it through crawling and indexing it.
Secondly, it’s so much harder and time-consuming to write a new blog post from scratch than update an old blog post - I can’t stress that enough, even if you think the blog post is on a random topic or not strictly to do with your core services.
One of my favourite content marketing exercises is to take old blogs and then add new content to them relating to questions people ask on Google. This is a great way to refresh them plus add keywords or phrases without having to completely reinvent the blog.
We’ve used this process for a number of our blogs, keeping them high up Google and evergreen from year to year, such as Christmas-related ones, so that they pick up momentum on an annual cycle.
It goes without saying that cramming or stuffing old blog posts with irrelevant, bland or inconsequential content won’t do anything to improve their ranking.
If you want to update your existing blog posts with more content to help them rank better, it needs to be fresh and with added depth. Focus on adding real value rather than just extra words.
Read more: How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO from HubSpot
Anything else I need to know about blog word counts or length?
Actually no - if you follow the research, advice and points above, you’ll stand yourself in good stead when it comes to your blogs’ performance on Google.
To conclude, when determining the length of one of your blogs, there's no one-size-fits-all answer, as it depends on your audience, content quality and your SEO goals (but don’t worry if you don’t have these worked out fully). For SEO, blogs between 1,000-2,500 words often rank well, allowing for depth and engagement that can keep readers on the page longer. However, concise, high-quality content can also perform well, especially if it directly answers niche questions. Avoid filler content, as quality matters more than word count. Updating old posts with relevant, fresh information is a smart strategy to improve rankings and keep content evergreen. Ultimately, aim to provide valuable, targeted content—whether short or long—that resonates with your audience.
